Ain't it a glorious day
Ripe as a morning in May
I feel like I could fly
Have you ever seen
The grass so green
Or a bluer sky

Crash. Bang. Boom.

I walked in the door with shoes wet from the rain outside and I stepped gingerly into the dining room, where I had left things half-cocked. Against my better judgement, I decided to press forward and set my things down in a convenient place. That's when I tripped on the lamp cord laying across my path, managing to knock the lamp over and shatter its frosted glass shade on my floor. So much for well-lit thing-making. I really liked that lamp, too.

I'm glad I can be encouraging and helpful to others. But it doesn't always give me the sense of fulfillment it once did. I'm scroogily beginning to measure my returns and noticing the low levels in several of my encouragement tanks. Crisis-level lows in some cases. Enough for alarms to be set off and alternative sources to be researched.

If someone cared enough to light a real fire under me, I'd be ever so grateful. But then sometimes I feel as if I am burning at the stake, and nothing comes of it but a lot of smoke and ash.

I miss diving into something whose completion made sense. I miss looking forward to being done. Wanting to show myself. Wanting to share it. Wanting to celebrate. I miss the days when I wasn't afraid to finish things because of the rank emptiness their completion would leave. I used to feel like I was part of something. These days, I always feel as if I am somehow just visiting. Standing in. Understudying. Holding the page for someone else. Someone who will eventually step in and resume things in their normal, intended course. I'm no missionary. I have no desire to bounce from place to place. Never encouraging roots. Never getting to know anyone. Never letting anyone know my full name. I have no desire to secret myself away once the do-gooding is done. I want to have it out in the open, and I want it to matter. And I want to not care what anyone else deems it to be. I wish I could stop measuring myself against all these alien elements. All that is beyond my control. All that taunts me from just beyond my reach. Isn't it silly to envy those who will one day have what was never yours to begin with? Isn't it ridiculous to pine for an illusion? Isn't it an enormous, gigantic, inexcusable waste of time to lay in bed with your eyes closed trying to keep in the dream when you are fully awake and already quite sure of it? When you're not even fooling yourself, what value is there in the charade?